Philosophy House
Philosophy House
Preface In this first look, one is likely to ask how architecture whose subject matter is more about form and function is related with philosophy that have links with reflection and debate. To answer the question, it is tried to first provide a full introduction of definition of philosophy, its subject matter and its relation with daily life. In this paper, the philosophy as a whole is not something that raises big questions that are impossible to respond, but an effort to form an effective supposition upon which we think about the world and ourselves and this is thinking. Under this definition, philosophy will include all the fields of thinking and everything can become its subject of study. The only condition is to avoid habituation and diurnal mode. Instead we must take a new look at our surrounding. In other words, philosophy for one thing makes criticism about the existing thinking and for the other produces new frameworks. Nonetheless, philosophical understanding of architecture is quite difficult because architecture is related with natural sciences and technology to the extent it is linked with art and thinking and an architectural subjectivity in order to emerge as an objective reality must take form of technology. There are four outstanding perceptions about philosophy in different periods of history until current time each has brought great changes to their own time. They are as follows chronologically.
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Platonic Illusion By illusion as proposed in his philosophy and is more known as the philosophy of Platonic cave, he is after discovering truth by forming an idea of an illusive space the influence of which can be traced in architectural works in different periods of time. The Platonic cave can be interpreted so: "A call to thinking instead of relying on the way the objects appear to us. It is a call to dealing with philosophical deliberation at the start of philosophical thinking. Early in our beliefs, we must abandon our certain idea that everything we hold as absolute truth." We must think logically. We must treat perceptions and common beliefs that are offered to us as evident and unquestionable truth critically. This Platonic idea alerts us that the entire thing our senses offer us is merely a shadow of a general truth or reality. In order to better comprehend the surrounding, we must evade such an idea and flee to beyond what our experience gives us. In Platonic thinking, regular experience is entirely an illusion. In order to escape the illusion and capture reality, we must entirely flee the domain of experience. This Platonic parable enjoys an undeniable similarity with popular virtual designs in post-modern architecture, including those designs known as cyber space or picture show techniques. The observers of these spaces watch unreal images that are produced by computing technology. They watch spaces that are only an appearance of the reality or beyond that an illusive location. The additional effects of sound and color more and more enhance the
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illusion. This constructive illusion is the thinking experience of Plato in architecture, the thinking that later set the stage for many philosophers, theory makers as well as architectures.
Descartes Dream Like Plato, Descartes seeks to question our regular reliance on the sensory perception in knowing the world and challenge our certain mind about what we hold as being objective and true. To that effect, Descartes provides special reasoning that shows that a large part of what we think we know based on experience, even those superficially most evident ones can be questioned. He particularly applies two lines of reasoning: Dream reasoning and Deceiving Satan reasoning. He wants to propose the probability that experience can deceive us about the world. He goes on to fundamentally raise doubt about what experience gives us, saying that we may even make mistake about the things that are exactly before us. The distinction between reality and dream is depicted in the hesitation created by virtual spaces and dubitation between reality and virtuality in different eras of architecture from Baroque to neo-Baroque. The substantial part of the Freudian psychoanalysis departs from this point. We can observe this possibility in its modern version in the movie The Existence, directed by David Cronenberg, 1999. In this film, our illusion making body is a super-modern video game connected to our spinal column and provides for the human being to live in a fully virtual space. The film suggests that we can not spare anything from the possibility that everything we experience is an illusion. Everything we may consider as a test of our awakening can be itself part of a dream.
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Accordingly, Descartes dream reasoning suggests the likelihood that what we experience at present can be a dream and what we consider as reality may by no means be a reality. The best illusory genre of the modern art belongs to Antoni Gaudi that depicts the feeling of movement towards metaphysics. The innovation of his cryptic works is actually returning to the origin that is metaphorically and illusively pointed out through complex and moving frames. The figurative frames in Casa Milla maintain a strong metaphor. Such movements have been delicately shown in his Guel Park. In this work, the illusion over whether it is of heavenly or earthly nature is evident. The space of the work wants to separate itself from earthly objectivities and superficial principles. However, the illusion that is carried out by the architecture can appear in various modes. The illusion and doubt may present us new reality. The kind of illusion can be found in abundant volume in structuralism works while other modes of illusion take effect in new architectural thinking that go beyond the first mode. Sometimes illusion and deception may prompt us to arrive at conclusions we perceive as realities while they are themselves a new illusion and doubt that may be endless. This is the deception that Descartes calls Deceiving Satan's deception to wit the factor that intentionally covers the truth and deceives. An example of the illusion can be found in "the discovery field" of the De La Villette Park, by Bernard Tschumi where octagons that are full of illusion and doubt foster the illusion of space by their special light work: a tiny ray of red light suddenly disappears in a stream of blue light.
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Truth and Nietzsche In Nietzsche's idea, the word of reality is derived from res (object) and realia (existing things) and suggests an static concept while the German term Wirklichkeit (reality, materialization, truth) is derived from the dynamic and living word of Wirken that means "influential through work and practice." This movement can be observed in modern architecture through the links it has made with nature. This relation is no longer recognized by diversity, rather by integrity. The works can be particularly found in Zaha Hadid's. In fact, confrontation or imitation between static reality (architecture) and dynamic reality (nature) is no longer meaningful. Rather, both of them are living in the overall trend of developments commenced by the new computing community. But such a dynamism that is inferred in the essence of reality from Nietzsche's view is a mental and intellectual dynamism. This is a dynamism that is less dealing with material things and more draws truth towards subjectivity. As Nietzsche himself says, " Everything with us may slip to the domain of abstract and untouchable matters in a turn of eye." In his view, the subjectivity, unlike the existing rationalism, will move towards metaphysic. "For us, even materiality is a metaphysical matter". In the chapter "How the true world finally turned into a story: The Story of an Error," contained in Twilight of Idols, he says that the transformation of metaphysics from Platonism to Christianity " Truth turned into woman" and this woman-transformation is the same as illusion and complexity and that "every idea has its origin in considering as
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equal the unequal matters. And which one is the truth? A host of metaphors, illusions and human like transformations? The truth is those perceptions that every one has forgotten they are perceptions." This illusion and metaphor in the modern thinking is regarded as a principle. Nietzsche, who can be regarded along with Freud and Marx as the founder of the modern thinking, has largely influenced the mind of the philosophers after him, especially Heidegger and notably Derrida. These thoughts have set the stage for the denial of dualism in philosophy whose generalization is evident in Derrida's views. By Nietzsche's arrival in philosophy, Platonism and especially his Platonic dualisms are put under question. Nietzsche rejects oppositeness, saying that the concept of oppositeness is acceptable only through logic. The difference created through his treatment of rationality prompts him to take excessive rationality and wisdom with doubt. He was mostly inclined towards general and metaphysical reasoning, that is to satisfy carnal self over wisdom and thinking, we must give a rational face to carnal desires and the ways to satisfy them.
Deleuze's Horizontal Thought The horizontal thought of the rhizome thought of Deleuze deals with minor bonds and connections, with mortality and departing. This kind of thought originates from Nietzsche's views and acts according to its especial norms and concepts. In fact, horizontal thought challenges the past time vertical, hierarchical thought, but avoids to be situated in the opposite. According to Deleuze, "difference and repetition in the contemporary time has taken place of identity and reappearance. In fact difference and repetition are the indices of movement towards the thought that
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never reappears, but instead leads to instability of reappearances and differences and this is the base of modern art." On the other hand, he is against encoding or identification of elements. He proposes a nomadic and dynamic state for modern thought that prompts it to evade any territory. In fact he founds on deterritorialization and nomadic mode and this thought moves us towards a kind of architecture that in Bernard Tschumi's saying, "Architecture is no longer designing conditions rather conditions are the design of architecture. This kind of architecture destroys the traditionalism shyness of the society and builds it anew." According to what stated above, the existing approach towards architecture in the current century has changed. The space is no longer static and stable rather, a chief element of which is dynamism, fluidity and complexity. In this space, human being can easily be transferred to other layers of information; a mythapoetique space in which everything lies alongside each other in a balanced, mosaic-like mode. In other words, human beings are both players and onlookers of this large scene and architecture is no longer a stable and unchangeable space, but a space that based on its multimedia nature provides new methods for architectures to point their minds. It is no longer enough to see an architectural space to understand it. In this new space or virtual reality, all the human senses from sighting to hearing, touching, smelling and even tasting are employed to know the space. In these new spaces some sensors transfer all messages in environs to senses and in return receive sensory and movement orders from an individual.
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We can make presence in virtual space, move towards every direction we wish and watch different angles of the surrounding and its current events upon our choice. We can hear the existing sounds in the environment based on our position and proportionate with our relocations, touch objects, experience texture, softness, roughness, hotness or coldness, smell odors in the surrounding and affect the events by our behavior and movements. In the virtual space, we can hear the sound of our steps, experience the blow of breeze, talk and interact with true individuals (users) or virtual ones (system) present in the surrounding and in one word we can live. This virtual space makes it possible for us to combine truth and virtuality so that virtual architecture can come alongside the true world as a supplement and put a vast field of information before the eyes of an individual for better knowledge. For that reason, it is difficult or impossible to separate these two spaces.
Formation Progress By this view of the definition of space in modern architecture, I begin to design architecture. The space designed in this project departs Cartesian definitions and takes a topologic form. In this space, field and information take place of performance and form. (figute1)
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figure1 I have tried to combine imagination with physical space in some way. This attitude has transformed space from a three dimensional mode to multi dimensional mode. (figure2)
Figure2
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In this space, the simultaneous application of light and electronic media has made it possible to separate internal spaces and define external spaces. This target will be accomplished by the application of new noise-proofing tools and laser-show systems. In this space, it is possible to pass through walls. Doors are things of the past and are no longer needed.(figure3)
figure3 In this project, the use of hard material is abandoned, replaced by fluid and interactive material. The application of this project is very flexible and changes according to the message intended to be given to visitors. The spaces of the project are in contact with visitors on an interactive mode. In this project, the floors do not specify the horizontal line and the wall is not separated from ground, not ground from stairwell and ramp, and the
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vertical attraction from horizontal feeling. Spaces of this project can be called philosophical understanding spaces. Using mentioned and expressed methods these spaces are aimed at making great philosophical concepts understood in an audio-visual method. The goal lying in this act is to create attraction and traction this generation immersed in materialistic thoughts. This special transfer is transferred to viewer through new and surprising senses. The project is 3920 square meters the design of which inspired by topographical lines of the site in a fluid and changing frame with a mass that interact with the surrounding (the sloping environment in the area) so that it mixes with the area and becomes an integral part of it. (figure4)
figure4 The space begins from 3 stable mass in one side of the project and ends up in a fluid and floating mass with complete weightlessness on the other side of the project, hidden within the site so that it suggests to the visitor the feeling of passing from reality to virtutality. The kind of external skins is a special reflective metal and gradually moves towards plasma, transparent and impressive space. (figure5)
Philosophy House
figure5 In the basement, there are installations and a parking lot of collectively 1070 square meters that are available to motorists through ramps. Besides several vertical routes to transfer people upstairs, a space is designed in the entrance to the project I call it information vortex. This space consists of ramps that are made from impressive fluid crystal to impress the senses of onlookers as well as a series of optical fibers to transform the thermal energy of the onlookers to optical energy. This space transfers a feeling of plunging in the virtual world of information to onlookers and brings them out of the daily material world to a virtual space. Moreover, factors like noise-proofing and laser-show are linked to the sighting and hearing senses of the individual to produce more information. (figure6)
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figure6 The ground floor and the first floor have collectively three applications: The administrative section: This section is designed to be situated in the ground floor in the vicinity of two main entrances and due to use of internal information networks it is reduced to 240 square meters. The training section: This section includes classes, display rooms and multi-purpose halls and is designed to be situated in the vicinity of the administrative spaces on that side of the project which has more stable and sustainable frame. Part of this section, 770 square meters, is designed for the ground floor while the rest, 210 square meters is designed for the first floor, collectively making 980 square meters of the entire space. The virtual reality experience spaces of philosophy: This section includes two sections of virtual reality experience and interactive space. It is better called philosophical understanding spaces. These spaces are meant to make people understand great concepts of philosophy in an
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audiovisual manner through the methods stated above. The goal is to create attraction for a generation plunged in material thinking. This spatial contact is transferred to individuals through new remarkable feelings. The spaces in the two floors are collectively 1100 square meters, of which 1000 square meters is located in the ground floor and the rest in the first floor. These spaces encompass video projectors, inter activating buttons, and laser shows for closer contact with users so tat they become further interactive against their behavior. (figure7)
figure7